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Gear4music has reported a 6% decline in revenues to 62.6m for the six months to 30 September 2023.
The group’s European and rest of the world revenues also dropped by 15% to £26.1m.
However, its UK sales saw a 3% increase from £35.5m to £36.5m.
The group stated that revenues reflect the previously announced focus on “prioritising gross margins ahead of sales growth, in what continues to be a challenging market”.
Gross margin is expected to be 27.1%, 80 bps higher than last year and gross profit for the period is expected to fall to £17m from £17.4m a year earlier.
Looking ahead, the group expects its full year outlook to remain in line with market expectations and UK revenues to continue to be stronger than European revenues.
Andrew Wass, Gear4music’s chief executive officer, said: “We have continued to make good progress with our strategic objectives in what we anticipated would be challenging market conditions. We are pleased to have achieved growth in the UK, whilst our European markets have been impacted by lower consumer demand.
“Mindful of the current trading environment, we have retained our pricing discipline and focused on improving gross margins. In addition, we have taken decisive action to drive further efficiencies and ensure our cost base is appropriately configured to deliver our profitable growth strategy.”
He added: “As we look to leverage the potential of AI driven technologies and further reconfigure the business into a lower cost operation, we will continue to invest into future growth projects such as our second-hand system, ensuring the group is well positioned to quickly and profitably scale further as economic conditions improve.”
